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There is an unspoken rule about doctors’ offices which states that the walls must be stiflingly beige, not with a speck of color. There’s a second unspoken rule that they must always smell vaguely of powder and sanitizer, and a third which states that even on the coldest of days, the faux-leather chairs must stick relentlessly to skin—they’d probably find a way to stick even if Shouto happened to be wearing jeans.
Shouto has never confirmed any of these rules. Not officially, anyway, but they’re still absolute truth. He’s followed the line where beige carpeting meets beige wall, followed the seam around the room with his eyes ten, even twenty times. He’s committed the carpet stains to memory, and which of the children's’ toys have stickers stuck to them. They’re all peeling off, anyway.
By now, Shouto knows by heart the sounds of sliding of the glass at the receptionists’ window and the scratch of pen against clipboard, a thin paper barrier. His head automatically lifts when any employee appears, and droop back down when somebody else is taken back.
Over an interior design magazine—which, fine , is not Shouto’s literature of choice, but the clinic’s selection is sparse—he watches as a girl about his age is called back, a baby on her hip.
He slumps against the chair once more, furrowing his brows as the skin of his thighs, sticky with sweat, slide against the chair.
The clock ticks, ticks, ticks, and Shouto lets out a sigh so powerful that it rustles even his bangs. The interior design magazine sits abandoned on a side table next to him. Shouto allows his hand to sink into the pocket of his sweatshirt and wrap around his cellphone; it’s dead, and he severely regrets not charging it the night before. More than that, he regrets using up the 17 percent on… playing 2048 —a fruitless effort, because his phone had died just as he secured a 1024 tile.
The floor, even though it is carpet and gives way to hundreds of pairs of feet per day, creaks as somebody enters the waiting room, and Shouto flickers his gaze up to where an employee stands with a clipboard.
Three seats down, somebody shuffles and then stands, and Shouto’s shoulders slump once more, back of the chair pressing into his shoulder blades.
Time is probably fake here. It certainly feels like nothing; Shouto isn’t certain if he’s been here for—hours, even days? (It feels like days.)
Dimly, much more dully than Shouto had anticipated, the employee calls, “Todoroki? Shouto?”
The solitary patient in the row alongside Shouto is still there, except they’re sitting now. Shouto blinks, looks upwards towards the employee, and stands, finally finally from the uncomfortable waiting room seat.
The waiting room with its sticky chairs, grimy toys, and off-the-hook phone are all forgotten as Shouto follows down the hallway. He’s sticky with sweat—it is June, after all—but he’s never felt so light. He floats into exam room six.
The preliminary exams are just that. They’re compulsory and easy, and Shouto doesn’t think twice about letting his temperature and blood pressure be taken. His blood has long since been drawn, tested, and the results analyzed.
So, this is all that’s left. Shouto would certainly hesitate to call it underwhelming . The experience of sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for his first dose of testosterone is certainly not underwhelming, but the room itself certainly is.
The carpeting is swapped for scuffed up linoleum tiles. In place of the beige paint is green; when sick patients come in, Shouto can only imagine it matches the shade of their face. In any instance, he can’t imagine it to be comforting.
Instead of sticky toys and magazines and bowls of mints on the counter, there are glass containers of tongue depressors, thermometer covers, and cotton balls. To his right, a painting of a faded sunrise hangs crooked. There is a chip in the glass. Above him, there is a water stain on the ceiling, but no dripping.
Shouto puffs out his cheeks in a sigh and kicks out his legs so they bounce back against the exam table, and as if on cue, somebody raps on the door once, twice, and enters.
She looks kind. Shouto breathes a sigh of relief.
“Todoroki?” she greets, seating herself on the spinning chair in front of Shouto.
He nods, swallowing thickly. For the first few years of Shouto’s life, when his mother was around to take him to the doctor’s— either to appointments for him or for her own appointments—Shouto would climb upon the doctor’s chair, spinning wildly until he could hardly stand.
Of course, that never flew under his father’s watchful eye. And, of course he wouldn’t do that now . (He’d be lying to say he hadn’t entertained the idea, though.)
The doctor’s voice is easy to follow if not slightly boring. Shouto has read up on the risks of taking testosterone, on injections, on what changes generally occur and at what times. None of this is new information in the slightest.
He nods and gives a quiet, “Uh-huh,” hopefully attentive.
This is unremarkable to the doctor, but it is monumental to Shouto. Of course. Of course this is monumental to Shouto. He watches with sharp intensity as she retrieves the vial and two syringes from the small built-in fridge behind her.
It’s mesmerizing, watching as Shouto’s doctor transfers the testosterone from the vial to the syringe, tapping the air bubbles out. He’s never been so completely thankful to somebody.
Well—that isn’t strictly true; he’s endlessly grateful to Midoriya, who has been faithfully by his side since they were sixteen years old and very afraid. His doctor is a close second, though. She’s absolutely a close second.
All in all, the process of the injection is nothing. It’s exactly what Shouto expected it to be, but it’s also surprisingly anticlimactic. His thigh is wiped down and the needle is pushed in, and just like that, there is testosterone.
He’s waited for this day for years.
Just as Shouto had when he followed the first employee down the hallway to exam room six, he floats down the carpeted hallway, weightless. The paper bag in his hand is featherlight.
Even walking home doesn’t bother him, not in the slightest. There’s a minor ache at the injection site, but Shouto would take that ten, twenty, two hundred times over for this. He would absolutely take it, no questions asked.
The sky seems clearer than it had been before Shouto’s appointment—entirely possible, since he had been in the clinic for over three hours. But, even the lobby of his and Midoriya’s apartment building doesn’t seem as stuffy as it usually is. The elevator does not take nearly as long as it usually does. Probably. Shouto could be imagining this, but everything seems to be a little too perfect.
Perfect. He embraces perfect, embraces Midoriya the moment he steps through the door of their apartment, reveling in his quiet breathing.
“You were gone for some time,” Midoriya chuckles, arms wrapped around Shouto’s soft waist. Unmoving, Shouto leans against him. When he inhales, the familiar scent of Midoriya’s deodorant is apparent.
“I thought I’d never get called back,” he agrees, finally stepping away to remove his shoes at the basket beside the door.
“You’d have waited forever, I bet. How’d it go?”
Shouto shrugs. “Probably.” The second part of Midoriya's question goes unheard, and when Midoriya lets out a puff of laughter, Shouto glances up with his head cocked.
In front of Shouto, Midoriya wrings his hands together, a telltale sign that he’s up to something. What, exactly? Shouto can’t be certain.
When Shouto leans up from where he had crouched by the door, Midoriya reaches a hand out, clasping it around Shouto’s. And, well, Shouto won’t complain, but there’s no conceivable reason for the two of them to hold hands.
“I got you—sort of a gift?” Midoriya confesses, then, and the tips of Shouto’s ears heat up, pink and warm and flushed.
“You did not have to do that,” he says, but smiles all the same. Midoriya is and always has been thoughtful, at least for the five years that they have known each other and the three that they have been dating for. It’s one of his best qualities. Midoriya has so, so many wonderful qualities. He’s selfless and caring. He’s attentive and always knows how to cheer up Shouto, even when Shouto isn’t aware he needs to be cheered up. He is kind and warm and open, and Shouto has never loved any person more.
“I love you,” Shouto tells him urgently, heart warm and golden and bursting at the seams.
Midoriya’s cheeks mirror Shouto’s ears, then, blush camouflaging the very lightest of his freckles. Uncertain, he gives Shouto’s hand a tiny squeeze.
“It’s not a fantastic present,” says Midoriya, stepping towards their tiny kitchen. “Because we’re twenty-one and broke, but—” he breaks off. He doesn’t need to say any more. They both know this.
Beside the stovetop sits a basket with a bottle of champagne, three packages of sour gummy candies, and one box of All Might band aids. It is so, so quintessentially Midoriya and so thoughtful that Shouto can’t help but lean forward to kiss him, urgent and wanting, one hand wrapping around to rest on the small of Midoriya’s back.
It’s cramped and warm in the tiny kitchen of their tiny apartment, an awkward place for any kind of intimacy, but Shouto kisses Midoriya as if it’s job, as if it’s the only thing he knows how to do. Momentarily, he pulls away and then tilts his head, slotting their mouths together once more.
Into the kiss, Shouto smiles, so helplessly in love, and when Midoriya bunches up a fistful of Shouto’s shirt, Shouto has to pull away.
“Thank you,” he says, and intertwines his fingers together, stretching them above his head. The basket sits, untouched, and Shouto eyes it cautiously raises his eyebrow.
Rushed, Midoriya says, “I hope you like it, Shouto. It’s sort of—a little celebration. Well, the champagne is, and the sour candy—even though I don’t understand how you eat that. And the band-aids...for your shots.”
“It’s wonderful,” Shouto agrees. “You are wonderful.”
It’s only three in the afternoon, but Shouto reaches for the two champagne flutes that they own—one chipped from moving—and holds one out towards Midoriya.
It’s a small celebration, but it’s wonderful and everything Shouto could want. When Shouto uncorks the bottle of champagne, it fizzes over and spills onto the tile, a mess to clean up later, and Shouto switches the watermelon candy to a bowl, loses track of just how many he eats.
When they regroup on the couch, Midoriya’s hand resting at Shouto’s waistband and Shouto’s hand in Midoriya’s hair, Midoriya teases him for tasting of sour—but it can’t be all bad, because he leans in seconds later, just as giddy as Shouto.
And, as afternoon becomes evening and as Shouto’s head begins to swim with champagne and love and dizzy happiness, he knows, finally knows, that happiness is not such a distant speck as it once was.
Happiness, absolutely, is this.